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Javascript will be the new basic. I would tell any high school student to pick up javascript over any other language. They can graduate to something else later

Javascript will be the new basic. I would tell any high school student to pick up javascript over any other language. They can graduate to something else later (bonus: javascipt is not a crippling first language unlike basic). I'm not sure if javascript will become a big target language. The only framework that I know of that compiles into javascript is GWT and I don't think that it is receiving widespread use.

jrockway 18y ago
Maybe not, but who wants to write Java? Parenscript is another language that compiles to JavaScript, and although it's very simple, I think most web apps written in CL use it. So it might not be popular overall, but it is popular among its target market. Now if only I could have a cxml-stp style DOM in Javascript...
- gruseom 18y ago
  although it's very simple Parenscript's simplicity is by design and is one of the best things about it. It makes it easy to read and debug the generated JS, and allows for efficiency while still adding a ton of abstractive power. Now if only I could have a cxml-stp style DOM in Javascript I don't know what that is. I googled it, and still don't know what it is. Could you give a brief description and an example or two of why you like it?
  - jrockway 18y ago
    cxml-stp is http://www.lichteblau.com/cxml-stp/ http://www.lichteblau.com/cxml-stp/. Basically, it's the W3C DOM, but Lisp-like. As an example, CL has a function called "find-if". It visits every element in a sequence, and returns a new sequence containing the elements that match the supplied predicate function. (Think "grep" in Perl.) The DOM doesn't have anything like this, but STP does -- find-child-if and find-recursively-if. That means you can write something expressive like (find-recursively-if (of-name "p") document) to get all the <p> nodes in the document, rather than writing the traversal code manually. I have used DOM in a variety of languages, and it only feels natural in Java. No other language is crippled the way Java is, so it doesn't make much sense to use the W3C standard, unless you just want to port existing DOM code form one language to another. (Standards are good for legacy code, but not so good for new code.)

jrockway 18y ago

Maybe not, but who wants to write Java? Parenscript is another language that compiles to JavaScript, and although it's very simple, I think most web apps written in CL use it. So it might not be popular overall, but it is popular among its target market. Now if only I could have a cxml-stp style DOM in Javascript...

gruseom 18y ago
although it's very simple Parenscript's simplicity is by design and is one of the best things about it. It makes it easy to read and debug the generated JS, and allows for efficiency while still adding a ton of abstractive power. Now if only I could have a cxml-stp style DOM in Javascript I don't know what that is. I googled it, and still don't know what it is. Could you give a brief description and an example or two of why you like it?
- jrockway 18y ago
  cxml-stp is http://www.lichteblau.com/cxml-stp/ http://www.lichteblau.com/cxml-stp/. Basically, it's the W3C DOM, but Lisp-like. As an example, CL has a function called "find-if". It visits every element in a sequence, and returns a new sequence containing the elements that match the supplied predicate function. (Think "grep" in Perl.) The DOM doesn't have anything like this, but STP does -- find-child-if and find-recursively-if. That means you can write something expressive like (find-recursively-if (of-name "p") document) to get all the <p> nodes in the document, rather than writing the traversal code manually. I have used DOM in a variety of languages, and it only feels natural in Java. No other language is crippled the way Java is, so it doesn't make much sense to use the W3C standard, unless you just want to port existing DOM code form one language to another. (Standards are good for legacy code, but not so good for new code.)